Mac OS 9 has long been a dead operating system – since the mock funeral of the OS in 2001, in fact. There are always people that want to relive the glory days, however; and you can too, and all from within your own browser.
If you head over to MacOS9.app, you'll find yourself sitting in front of a very well-emulated version of one of Apple's most popular operating systems, including some apps that you can try out within it, too.
Nostalgia in buckets
MacOS 9 was replaced by the now extremely long-lived OS X — upon which revisions such as Ventura and Big Sur have been built — which switched over to a Unix-based system. This browser-based version of Apple's old OS works surprisingly well too, albeit with a slight amount of delay to some of the inputs.
That said, it's likely that it never ran all that quickly in the first place, and this browser version runs faithfully to the normal experience. Rose-tinted glasses, eh? There's some cool stuff here as well, with some games and apps that run in the emulation: Civilisation, Adobe Photoshop, Netscape Navigator and more for that authentic nineties Mac feel.
There are other OSes you can run as well. At Infinite Mac, you'll find other options going all the way back to 1984's System 1.0. As with lots of older software that will take a bit more know-how to navigate if you've been raised on modern Mac systems, although with a little googling you'll be in 80's Macintosh land in no time at all.
You can even drag and drop files into any of the old Mac software so that you can run them on the virtual machine. That opens up a whole multitude of other apps and programs that you can run, making this a super cool little browser-based extra.
What was your favorite version of Mac OS, and will you be having a play with one of the versions over at Infinite Mac? Get signed up to our forums to join the conversation.
